News Releases

Just like with humans, the skin on marine mammals serves as an important line of defense against pathogens in their environment. A new study sheds light on the skin microbiome—a group of microorganisms that live on skin—in healthy humpback whales, which could aid in future efforts to monitor their health.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is selling its controlling interest in EOM Offshore, a mooring systems company based on technology developed by engineers at WHOI. The company was founded as a start-up in 2010 to commercialize highly stretchable, fatigue-resistant hoses to transmit power and data to and from undersea sensors.

The rising acidity of the oceans threatens coral reefs by making it harder for corals to build their skeletons. A new study identifies the details of how ocean acidification affects coral skeletons, allowing scientists to predict more precisely where corals will be more vulnerable.

Rising temperatures along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean will force American lobsters (H. americanus) farther offshore and into more northern waters, according to a new study led by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

Heidi Sosik, a senior scientist in the Biology Department at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has been named a 2018 Fellow of The Oceanography Society (TOS). Sosik's accomplishments will be formally recognized on Feb. 13, 2018, during a ceremony at the 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon.

Scientists have found surprising evidence of rapid climate change in the Arctic: In the middle of the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole, they discovered that the levels of radium-228 have almost doubled over the last decade.

Scientists and engineers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will receive a two-year, $3 million award from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to transform how the oceanographic community develops and deploys technology ranging from individual sensors to comprehensive, round-the-clock observing systems. By integrating new ideas and exploring new partnerships, WHOI researchers aim to foster an environment that reduces the cost of ocean science and engineering and that enables more flexible ocean observing systems that can rapidly incorporate new technologies to meet evolving science objectives and requirements.

The U.S. research vessel Atlantis will launch a search-and-recovery mission for the missing Argentinian submarine ARG San Juan—equipped with a U.S. Navy remotely operated vehicle (ROV) flown down to Argentina.

The research vessel Atlantis, operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), was diverted Nov. 21 to help search for the missing Argentine submarine ARG San Juan and has been participating in the search since then. Atlantis was en route to a planned oceanographic mission in the South Atlantic when U.S. Navy officials directed it to head to the area where last communications were received from the sub.

Two new grants to the Woods Hole Sea Grant program totaling more than $650,000 are part of a national strategic investment in aquaculture and will support research aimed at expanding aquaculture production in Massachusetts.

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) was awarded a competive federal grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to develop a forecast system that will predict seasonal and year-to-year changes in ocean temperatures on the Northeast U.S. Shelf. Other institutions involved in this project include Stony Brook University (SBU) and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) in Woods Hole.

Jim Ledwell, Emeritus Research Scholar at the Wood Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), has been named a 2017 Fellow of The Oceanography Society (TOS). The society noted his many achievements, in particular his “seminal contributions to the understanding of oceanic mixing,” as the reason for his selection.

A new study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and colleagues identified for the first time an extensive conserved group of bacteria within healthy humpback whales' blow—the moist breath that whales spray out of their blowholes when they exhale.

In the future, our homes and vehicles could be powered by fuel made from seaweed grown at large-scale offshore farms. Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) are working to help make that scenario a reality sooner with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

Scientists have found a previously unsuspected place where radioactive material from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster has accumulated—in sands and brackish groundwater beneath beaches up to 60 miles away. The sands took up and retained radioactive cesium originating from the disaster in 2011 and have been slowly releasing it back to the ocean.

The organizers of a new, free event at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) want to make ocean science more accessible to people who are not native English speakers by reaching out to two of the largest non-English-speaking communities on Cape Cod: those who speak Spanish or Portuguese. The symposium, “OCEANOS: WHOI en Español e Português,” will feature short presentations in either language about marine research by students and scientists from WHOI and other science institutions in Woods Hole, Mass.

A study published Aug. 28, 2017, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences adds a new dimension to the controversial decision to inject large amounts of chemical dispersants immediately above the crippled oil well at the seafloor during the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010.

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is dedicated to research and education to advance understanding of the ocean and its interaction with the Earth system, and to communicating this understanding for the benefit of society. Learn more »